What Your Meetup can do for You

Learning

Ideas from Talks. Tech meetups often have talks and you'll discover new ideas, tools or resources from those. Often when it is outside of your field or in a subject that doesn't directly interest you.

Ideas from People. The same applies as you talk and listen to those around you. I often learn more from the questions asked than the talks.

Inspiration or the Next Step. Inspiration for your next step may strike when you are surrounded by the ideas and people of a meetup. For example, I now quite like the idea of being a data science translator!

Social

Introduce you to like-minded people. In a meetup community you can find like-minded people with shared interests for conversation, learning, collaboration and friendship..

Give a place for tech conversations. If you have few tech conversations with friends or workmates here are people happy to talk lambda functions, design patterns or data ethics.

Give you a community. If you've moved somewhere new, work alone, or don't talk much at work, a meetup can provide you with a place to find a new community.

Opportunities

Somewhere to get advice and help. If you have a tech problem or question, here is a place full of technical people willing to help you out if you ask.

Potential collaborators/employers/customers/collaborators. Here you will make connections with others who might one day work with you in some way.

Somewhere to present. If you have a talk to try out or an idea you want to get across, a local tech meetup is a small and receptive audience.
Somewhere to give back

A place to give back to. If you want to help out a tech community, then a meetup is a good opportunity. Organise an event that interests you, suggest new ones or help out at existing ones.

Go and Meet

After seeing what tech meetups can do for you, now is the time to go and find your next event!

A Remote Software and Database Contractor specialised in Umbraco, Duncan works from wherever he finds himself. He is the co-organiser of the Python Exeter and Data Science Exeter meetup groups and speaks about Remote Working, Umbraco, Python and .NET
Outside of work he is keen on travel, random generation, foreign languages and good food.